Our Objective Is Victory

RUSH: All right, folks, time to fire point-blank, dead between the eyes. I am getting a number of e-mail complaints from people who are identifying themselves, anyway, as conservatives who are saying that they have lost faith in me, that this is not what conservatism is all about, this is not the way conservatives should operate. Let me tackle it this way. I think, if I may be serious for a moment, we’re in a war, a political war in this country, and only one side is fully engaged and that’s the enemy, and our enemy happens to be liberalism which is found in the Democrat Party. I have played sound bites all morning, afternoon long from members of the Drive-By Media who have accused me of perverting their process, perverting the electoral process. I have been accused of being ungentlemanly, all of this because I suggested — did not make, did not demand, did not require — I suggested that Republicans in Texas and Ohio cross over and vote for Mrs. Clinton in the primaries in order to keep the bloodletting in the Democrat Party going to keep them in a state of chaos, to see to it that their nomination fight would not be wrapped up until they go to the convention.

Can we talk about who these people are? Who are liberals? These are people, you want to talk about perversion, these are people who have done their best to pervert the Constitution of the United States. These are people who have done their best to pervert the court system of the United States. These are the people who have done their best to pervert basic morality. I mean, after all, here they are wailing, and they’re whining, and they’re moaning Monday night, last night, this morning, about the immorality of my suggesting that you cross over and vote for Hillary. The same people who do not want to have a discussion on morality as it relates to abortion are the same people who now want to have a discussion on the morality of people voting, when they plainly reserve for themselves the right to cross over into our party and choose our nominee, for the express purpose of sabotaging our nomination process. Do you people actually think that the Democrats and independents that crossed over in the early Republican primaries for Senator McCain did so because they want him to be elected president? Quite the contrary. You might be whistling Dixie and fooling yourself, but please, I ask you not to do that.

These are the people who have done their best to pervert the war in Iraq. These are the people who have done their best to secure defeat in the war in Iraq and the war on terror. These are the people who seek to pervert any number of American traditions and institutions that have come to define the greatness of this country. And I, for one, am not content to sit by and let this be a one-sided fight. The quintessential discussion that we’re having here is who is going to triumph in this battle of ideas within the political arena of ideas to shape the future of the country? If you’ve been listening here regularly, I’m a little bit alarmed, our party’s reluctance to engage the battle, for whatever reason. And look at what happens when you do engage the battle. Look at what happens to the left when you do engage them. I said in the first hour, ‘Look, you media people, you Drive-By people, all upset here at what I’m doing. You’re looking at this the wrong way. Look at me as a maverick. Look at all of these people that voted for Hillary on the Republican side in Texas and Ohio, look at us as maverick conservatives. Look at us as independent conservatives.’

What happened last night was that the mavericks and independents among us voted for Hillary. But if we lose in November, my friends, you’d be foolish to blame me. One of these two people is going to get the nominee, our nomination. It’s going to be Hillary or Obama. One of them is. If we lose in November, who’s going to be held responsible? Who can you thank? Well, you can thank the Republican nominee himself. If our nominee cannot beat Hillary Clinton, he was never going to beat Obama. And if he goes up against Obama and loses, then that’s our nominee’s doing. I didn’t choose the Republican nominee. All I’m doing is helping to prolong the bloodletting in the Democrat Party, which can only help our nominee any way you look at it. In the process, what’s happening here, these phony journalists and anchors are exposing themselves. They’re upset with me because I helped Hillary. They’re upset with me because I have more influence than they do. They’re upset with me, bottom line, because they’ve spent months protecting Barack Obama and promoting Obama. They want him to be president.

It is patently obvious, is it not? Saturday Night Live parodied the softball press coverage — and, by the way, don’t discount the effect that that’s had this past week on the election results last night. NBC, they made fun of their own network. They made mincemeat of both NBC and PMSNBC, the softball coverage on Obama. You know what that did? That made the Drive-Bys get a little tougher on Obama last week. How malleable are the Drive-By Media when being parodied on Saturday Night Live can make ’em buck up, make ’em shape up, make ’em start acting like journalists for a change. They had chosen sides. Do you think all these Drive-Bys would be upset if I had been encouraging people to cross over and vote Obama? It would be just the opposite. I would be praised, as a maverick, as an independent. And even though they might have thought I was trying to corrupt their process, and they might have said so, they would have secretly been happy that I had done it. They can’t fool me with what their ultimate aim here is.

Folks, you have to realize here, you who listen to this program on a daily basis and have been for the almost 20 years that we’ve been here, you know full well the degree of corruption of our culture and society liberalism has wrought. I’ve probably left out a lot of things — courts, Constitution, education system, military, war on terror, war in Iraq. And they dare accuse us of mischief and immorality by having Republicans cross over? We’re just a bunch of mavericks and independents, ladies and gentlemen. By the way, do not the Democrats say that every vote should count? Democracy is sacred? Well, one of the options in those states, Ohio and Texas, is to permit to allow people to cross over. If they choose for whatever reason to do so, perfectly fine, no one should question why. Voters are exercising their sacred Democrat prerogative, which includes propping up a candidate on the opposing ticket for any reason, including that he or she might be easier to beat or the lesser of two evils president.

To say the Democrats don’t do this is absurd. In deciding whether to prop up Hillary or Obama, you have to consider two things. One, who’s easier to beat? Two, who would be the worst president? Because we have to allow a possibility the Democrat candidate can win. On both counts, probably prop up Hillary. She’d probably be easier to beat — well, I know she’d be easier to beat because half the country already hates her. I mean this is the objective of political campaigns, to drive up the negatives about your opponent, hers are already there, at 49%. Obama’s aren’t, and it’s going to be a long haul to get him up to 49% negatives, but if anybody can do it, it’s Hillary. Don’t you understand? Don’t you understand that at the end of the day, all of this is about us winning, as I said from the very beginning? This is about us winning!

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We go back to the phones to Washington, DC. Hi, Marty. Glad you called, sir.

CALLER: Yeah, Rush. Look, I love you, but I’m really upset with what you’ve done here. I mean, you have considerable power and I’m just afraid you’ve wielded it in the morning manner and our republic may suffer here as a result. Uh, I think Bob Beckel expressed my feeling best last night. Uh, he said, sure, she’s only picked up 20 delegates but she’s now basically guaranteed a spot, uh, on the ticket in some kind of capacity, top or bottom, and having them both on the ticket makes it tougher to win than if it was only one.

RUSH: Well, I disagree with that, but I think it makes it even easier. I don’t think that… Here we are. We’re just barely in the early days of March. I don’t think that anything’s guaranteed. You can’t say that this guarantees that she will be on the ticket top or bottom. All these wise men and these philosopher kings start making these comments. The only thing that we can say for certain, Marty, is that the results yesterday guarantee this thing is going to go on through at least Puerto Rico, which is June 7th. It’s going to come down to superdelegates and maybe they’ll decide to redo Florida and go to the convention. I also understand that there’s a possibility that could come out of this really unified and so forth, but what happened yesterday in Ohio and Texas, the net result was not that great a difference had Obama won. In fact, I just got late-breaking numbers out of Texas. You know, they had caucuses in Texas after the primary, and get this. According to Fox News, the numbers out of Texas caucuses last night require an asterisk on Hillary’s Tuesday night victory speech, showing gains made by Obama in the delegate grab race that all but numerically canceled out her big win in Ohio. So he won the caucuses; she won the primary, but whatever her delegate gain was in Ohio has been wiped out by his winning the caucuses in Texas. So there’s no change here.

CALLER: Well, I’m glad to hear that, and I just think that had you not intervened — and there’s no doubt in my mind that you’re the result of her winning Texas. I mean, I think she would have won Ohio anyway. You know, four months ago I thought the same thing you thought. Let’s make both of them spend all their money, wipe ’em out and I hope that ends up being the case. But I think if we had scored a knockout punch with her, uh, you know, I think that would have been better off. If they’re together, you know, as a result, uh (laughs). You got considerable power, but I don’t know.

RUSH: Well, here’s my thinking on this — and you’re free to disagree, but I’ll repeat this again. Let me ask you a question. Would you agree with me in my assessment that the Republican Party is reluctant to the point of not going to do it, to be critical of Barack Obama?

CALLER: Oh, unquestionably.

RUSH: All right.

CALLER: You hit the nail on the head.

RUSH: All right. Would you agree the Clintons are the Clintons?

CALLER: Yeah. That’s why I want them out.

RUSH: Would you agree that Mrs. Clinton wants this like none of us can imagine wanting anything?

CALLER: Oh, I would love to see her go to the jugular, Rush — don’t misunderstand me — and vice-versa with him. But the problem is, I think it’s now in a situation they’re both going to have to say, ‘Look, this is a blood let,’ and they’re going to have to unite. They may start kissing and making up at this point. I may be wrong.

RUSH: The only way that would happen is if Mrs. Clinton concludes that there is a way she can maneuver this to put herself on the top of the ticket, and the only way that she can maneuver… She can’t do that with delegates right now. So the only way that she can do this is to come up with some dirt on this guy that she can take to him and say, ‘Look, you want this out?’ This Rezko trial starting this week is going to have some details that Barack doesn’t want out there. His clean-and-pure-as-paradise image is going to suffer this week with some things that are going to come out about people he’s been doing business with.

CALLER: Yeah, but, Rush, you know what’s going on right now — not now, but is going to happen shortly. She’s going to have that — her operatives are going to have that conversation with him, say, ‘Do you want Rezko out?’ He’s going to say, ‘Look, I don’t want Rezko out, but you know darn well what I can come back with.’ That’s all the more reason I think there should be a truce.

RUSH: Okay, let’s strip all this away. Let’s get down to the nub of this. Because, look, I’m very much concerned that people are not understanding my take on this and my objective — and I also am not comfortable with the fact that some people think I’m goofing this up. I think it’s just the opposite. But let’s just cut to the nub of it. You don’t think that they can be beaten as a team?

CALLER: Yeah, I think it’s going to be tougher.

RUSH: Why?

CALLER: Don’t you?

RUSH: I mean, doesn’t this come down to who our nominee is?

CALLER: Well, look, that’s water under the bridge. We’re screwed because we got the worst possible nominee. I mean, we’re in a position now where we’ve gotta have…

RUSH: Okay, okay, okay. So do you believe me when I tell you that our objective here is our side winning and beating them?

CALLER: Of course.

RUSH: Okay, you just think I might be making a mistake in my judgment?

CALLER: Yeah, just a tactical error here.

RUSH: Tactical error.

CALLER: A strategic error.

RUSH: Oh, strategic, yeah, not tactical. But I don’t think it is an error.

CALLER: I hope you’re right.

RUSH: It’s all rooted in the fact that (sigh) we’re not going to play hardball. They are. And if we’re not going to play hardball and they are, then we gotta let ’em play hardball against each other for a while so that there are some people that have some serious questions. But I actually think — and don’t ask me to explain why, but — if they’re both on the ticket, it’s actually an easier victory. I just do. I think Obama would be the tougher of the two to beat, if he alone were on the ticket with his own choice of VP. If Hillary were on the ticket, that’s the easier of the two to beat. If they’re on the ticket together, and she’s on top, it’s easier than if Obama’s on top. It’s not by any means undoable, but it still boils down to the fact that people are blaming me here, when you admit that we don’t have the best nominee we could probably have. It’s going to… Look, I’m not running for president and I’m not out there getting votes. I’m not asking people to vote for me. I don’t know how it can be said I’m going to lose the election. I just do not know how that can be said, because I’m not going to be urging people to vote for either one of these two Democrats, plain and simple — and I’ve made that clear as well. Marty, thanks for the call. Jeff in Cincinnati, you’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Rush!

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: I need to mark this day on my calendar. What an honor it is to talk to you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir. Well, it’s March the 5th, 2008.

CALLER: (laughs) Duly noted. Hey, I was just calling to say that the irony of this is delicious. We are finally — like you were talking to the last caller about — starting to give them a taste of their own medicine. It’s been a source of frustration for me that we sit back and we keep taking these pokes in the ribs and kicks in the teeth from them, and their tactics.

RUSH: It’s not even that. We’ve been asking for kicks in the teeth! We’ve been asking for Democrats to join us, and we’ve been thinking that’s what make us good. ‘Look, the Democrats want to vote for our guy! Look, the independents want to vote for our guy. Wow! That’s really cool!’ So we turn it around and we go vote for their people, ‘It’s corruption. It’s ungentlemanly.’ You’re exactly right. They have been doing what they can to subvert our nomination process in 2000, 2004, and now in 2008. It’s a little tit-for-tat. So they did bring this on themselves. You know, one of the things that mild-mannered people don’t understand is that the aggressor sets the rules in any conflict — and it’s plain as day, folks, that we are not the aggressors here.